THE INTELLECTUALS AND THE BOSTON MOB
It makes a great deal of difference in the life of a race, as it does in
the life of an individual, whether the world expects much or little of
that individual or of that race. I suppose that every boy and every girl
born in poverty have felt at some time in their lives the weight of the
world against them. What the people in the communities did not expect
them to do it was hard for them to convince themselves that they could
do.
After I got so that I could read a little, I used to take a great deal
of satisfaction in the lives of men who had risen by their own efforts
from poverty to success. It is a great thing for a boy to be able to
read books of that kind. It not only inspires him with the desire to do
something and make something of his life, but it teaches him that
success depends upon his ability to do something useful, to perform some
kind of service that the world wants.
The trouble in my case, as in that of other coloured boys of any age,
was that the stories we read in school were all concerned with the
success and achievements of white boys and men. Occasionally I spoke to
some of my schoolmates in regard to the characters of whom I had read,
but they invariably reminded me that the stories I had been reading had
to do with the members of another race. Sometimes I tried to argue the
matter with them, saying that what others had done some of us might also
be able to do, and that the lack of a past in our race was no reason why
it should not have a future.
They replied that our case was entirely different. They said, in effect,
that because of our colour and because we carried in our faces the brand
of a race that had been in slavery, white people did not want us to
succeed.
In the end I usually wound up the discussion by recalling the life of
Frederick Douglass, reminding them of the high position which he had
reached and of the great service which he had performed for his own race
and for the cause of human freedom in the long anti-slavery struggle.
Even before I had learned to read books or newspapers, I remember
hearing my mother and other coloured people in our part of the country
speak about Frederick Douglass’s wonderful life and achievements. I
heard so much about Douglass when I was a boy that one of the reasons
why I wanted to go to school and learn to read was that I might read for
myself what he had written and said. In fact, one of the first books
that I remember reading was his own story of his life, which Mr.
Douglass published under the title of “My Life and Times.” This book
made a deep impression upon me, and I read it many times.
After I became a student at Hampton, under Gen. Samuel C. Armstrong, I
heard a great deal more about Frederick Douglass, and I followed all his
movements with intense interest. At the same time I began to learn
something about other prominent and successful coloured men who were at
that time the leaders of my race in the United States. These were such
men as Congressman John M. Langston, of Virginia; United States Senator
Blanche K. Bruce, of Mississippi; Lieut.-Gov. P. B. S. Pinchback, of
Louisiana; Congressman John R. Lynch, of Mississippi; and others whose
names were household words among the masses of the coloured people at
that time. I read with the greatest eagerness everything I could get
hold of regarding the prominent Negro characters of that period, and was
a faithful student of their lives and deeds. Later on I had the
privilege of meeting and knowing all of these men, but at that time I
little thought that it would ever be my fortune to meet and know any of
them.
[Illustration:
HON. P. B. S. PINCHBACK
OF LOUISIANA
Lieutenant-Governor 1871–72, and afterward Congressman
]
[Illustration:
MAJOR JOHN R. LYNCH, U. S. A.
Who served as a member of Congress from Mississippi
]
[Illustration:
BLANCHE K. BRUCE
OF MISSISSIPPI
Who was born a slave, but was the first Negro to become a member of
the United States Senate
]
[Illustration:
CHARLES BANKS
“He has taught me the value of common-sense in dealing with conditions
as they exist in the South”
]
On one occasion, when I happened to be in Washington, I heard that
Frederick Douglass was going to make a speech in a near-by town. I had
never seen him nor heard him speak, so I took advantage of the
opportunity. I was profoundly impressed both by the man and by the
address, but I did not dare approach even to shake hands with him. Some
three or four years after I had organized the Tuskegee Institute I
invited Mr. Douglass to make a visit to the school and to speak at the
commencement exercises of the school. He came and spoke to a great
audience, many of whom had driven thirty or forty miles to hear the
great orator and leader of the race. In the course of time I invited all
of the prominent coloured men whose names I have mentioned, as well as
others, to come to Tuskegee and speak to our students and to the
coloured people in our community.
As a matter of course, the speeches (as well as the writings) of most of
these men were concerned for the most part with the past history, or
with the present and future political problems, of the Negro race. Mr.
Douglass’s great life-work had been in the political agitation that led
to the destruction of slavery. He had been the great defender of the
race, and in the struggle to win from Congress and from the country at
large the recognition of the Negro’s rights as a man and a citizen he
had played an important part. But the long and bitter political struggle
in which he had engaged against slavery had not prepared Mr. Douglass to
take up the equally difficult task of fitting the Negro for the
opportunities and responsibilities of freedom. The same was true to a
large extent of other Negro leaders. At the time when I met these men
and heard them speak I was invariably impressed, though young and
inexperienced, that there was something lacking in their public
utterances. I felt that the millions of Negroes needed something more
than to be reminded of their sufferings and of their political rights;
that they needed to do something more than merely to defend themselves.
Frederick Douglass died in February, 1895. In September of the same year
I delivered an address in Atlanta at the Cotton States Exposition.
I spoke in Atlanta to an audience composed of leading Southern white
people, Northern white people, and members of my own race. This seemed
to me to be the time and the place, without condemning what had been
done, to emphasize what ought to be done. I felt that we needed a
policy, not of destruction, but of construction; not of defence, but of
aggression; a policy, not of hostility or surrender, but of friendship
and advance. I stated, as vigorously as I was able, that usefulness in
the community where we resided was our surest and most potent
protection.
One other point which I made plain in this speech was that, in my
opinion, the Negro should seek constantly in every manly,
straightforward manner to make friends of the white man by whose side he
lived, rather than to content himself with seeking the good-will of some
man a thousand miles away.
While I was fully convinced, in my own mind, that the policy which I had
outlined was the correct one, I was not at all prepared for the
widespread interest with which my words were received.
I received telegrams and congratulations from all parts of the country
and from many persons whose names I did not know or had heard of only
indirectly through the newspapers or otherwise. Very soon invitations
began to come to me in large numbers to speak before all kinds of bodies
and on all kinds of subjects. In many cases I was offered for my
addresses what appeared to me almost fabulous sums. Some of the lecture
bureaus offered me as high as $300 and $400 a night for as long a period
as I would speak for them. Among other things which came to me was an
offer from a prominent Western newspaper of $1000 and all expenses for
my services if I would describe for it a famous prize-fight.
I was invited, here and there, to take part in political campaigns,
especially in states where the Negro vote was important. Lecture bureaus
not only urged upon me the acceptance of their offers through letters,
but even sent agents to Tuskegee. Newspapers and magazines made generous
offers to me to write special articles for them. I decided, however, to
wait until I could get my bearings. Apparently the words which I had
spoken at Atlanta, simple and almost commonplace as they were, had
touched a deep and responsive chord in the public mind.[1] This gave me
much to think about. In the meantime I determined to stick close to my
work at Tuskegee.
Footnote 1:
The following is copied from the official history of the exposition:
“Then came Booker T. Washington, who was destined to make a national
reputation in the next fifteen minutes. He appeared on the programme
by invitation of the directors as the representative of the Negro
race. This would appear to have been a natural arrangement, if not a
matter of course, and it seems strange now that there should have been
any doubt as to the wisdom or propriety of giving the Negro a place in
the opening exercises. Nevertheless, there was, and the question was
carefully, even anxiously, considered before it was decided. There
were apprehensions that the matter would encourage social equality and
prove offensive to the white people, and in the end unsatisfactory to
the coloured race. But the discussion satisfied the board that this
course was right, and they resolved to risk the expediency of doing
right. The sequel showed the wisdom of their decision. The orator
himself touched upon the subject with great tact, and the recognition
that was given has greatly tended to promote good feeling between the
races, while the wide and self-respecting course of the Negroes on
that occasion has raised them greatly in the estimation of their white
fellow-citizens.”
In introducing the speaker, Governor Bullock said: “We have with us
to-day the representative of Negro enterprise and Negro civilization.
I have the honour to introduce to you Prof. Booker T. Washington,
principal of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial College, who will
formally present the Negro exhibit.”
Professor Washington was greeted with applause, and his speech
received marked attention.
One of the most surprising results of my Atlanta speech was the number
of letters, telegrams, and newspaper editorials that came pouring in
upon me from all parts of the country, demanding that I take the place
of “leader of the Negro people,” left vacant by Frederick Douglass’s
death, or assuming that I had already taken this place. Until these
suggestions began to pour in upon me, I never had the remotest idea that
I should be selected or looked upon, in any such sense as Frederick
Douglass had been, as a leader of the Negro people. I was at that time
merely a Negro school teacher in a rather obscure industrial school. I
had devoted all my time and attention to the work of organizing and
bringing into existence the Tuskegee Institute, and I did not know just
what the functions and duties of a leader were, or what was expected of
him on the part of the coloured people or of the rest of the world. It
was not long, however, before I began to find out what was expected of
me in the new position into which a sudden newspaper notoriety seemed to
have thrust me.
I was not a little embarrassed, when I first began to appear in public,
to find myself continually referred to as “the successor of Frederick
Douglass.” Wherever I spoke—whether in the North or in the South—I
found, thanks to the advertising I had received, that large audiences
turned out to hear me.
It has been interesting, and sometimes amusing, to note the amount and
variety of disinterested advice received by a man whose name is to any
extent before the public. During the time that my Atlanta address was,
so to speak, under discussion, and almost every day since, I have
received one or more letters advising me and directing my course in
regard to matters of public interest.
One day I receive a letter, or my attention is called to some newspaper
editorial, in which I am advised to stick to my work at Tuskegee and put
aside every other interest that I may have in the advancement of my
race. A day or two later I may receive a letter, or read an editorial in
a newspaper, saying that I am making a mistake in confining my attention
entirely to Tuskegee, to Negro education, or even to the Negro in the
United States. It has been frequently urged upon me, for example, that I
ought, in some way or other, to extend the work that we are trying to do
at Tuskegee to Africa or to the West Indies, where Negroes are a larger
part of the population than in this country.
There has been a small number of white people and an equally small
number of coloured people who felt, after my Atlanta speech, that I
ought to branch out and discuss political questions, putting emphasis
upon the importance of political activity and success for the members of
my race. Others, who thought it quite natural that, while I was in the
South, I should not say anything that would be offensive, expected that
I would cut loose in the North and denounce the Southern people in a way
to keep alive and intensify the sectional differences which had sprung
up as a result of slavery and the Civil War. Still others thought that
there was something lacking in my style of defending the Negro. I went
too much into the facts and did not say enough about the Rights of Man
and the Declaration of Independence.
When these people found that I did not change my policy as a result of
my Atlanta speech, but stuck to my old line of argument, urging the
importance of education of the hand, the head, and the heart, they were
thoroughly disappointed. So far as my addresses made it appear that the
race troubles in the South could be solved by education rather than by
political measures, they felt that I was putting the emphasis in the
wrong place.
I confess that all these criticisms and suggestions were not without
effect upon my mind. But, after thinking the matter all over, I decided
that, pleasant as it might be to follow the programme that was laid out
for me, I should be compelled to stick to my original job and work out
my salvation along the lines that I had originally laid down for myself.
My determination to stand by the programme which I had worked out during
the years that I had been at Tuskegee and which I had expressed in my
Atlanta speech, soon brought me into conflict with a small group of
coloured people who sometimes styled themselves “The Intellectuals,” at
other times “The Talented Tenth.” As most of these men were graduates of
Northern colleges and made their homes for the most part in the North,
it was natural enough, I suppose, that they should feel that leadership
in all race matters should remain, as heretofore, in the North. At any
rate, they were opposed to any change from the policy of uncompromising
and relentless antagonism to the South so long as there seemed to them
to be anything in Southern conditions wrong or unjust to the Negro.
My life in the South and years of study and effort in connection with
actual and concrete problems of Southern life had given me a different
notion, and I believed that I had gained some knowledge and some insight
which they were not able to obtain in the same degree at a distance and
from the study of books.
The first thing to which they objected was my plan for the industrial
education of the Negro. It seemed to them that in teaching coloured
people to work with the hands I was making too great a concession to
public opinion in the South. Some of them thought, probably, that I did
not really believe in industrial education myself; but in any case they
were opposed to any “concession,” no matter whether industrial education
was good or bad.
According to their way of looking at the matter, the Southern white man
was the natural enemy of the Negro, and any attempt, no matter for what
purpose, to gain his sympathy or support must be regarded as a kind of
treason to the race.
All these matters furnished fruitful subjects for controversy, in all of
which the college graduates that I have referred to were naturally the
leaders. The first thing that such a young man was tempted to do after
leaving college was, it seems, to start out on a lecturing tour,
travelling about from one town to another for the purpose of discussing
what are known as “race” subjects.
I remember one young man in particular who graduated from Yale
University and afterward took a postgraduate course at Harvard, and who
began his career by delivering a series of lectures on “The Mistakes of
Booker T. Washington.” It was not long, however, before he found that he
could not live continuously on my mistakes. Then he discovered that in
all his long schooling he had not fitted himself to perform any kind of
useful and productive labour. After he had failed in several other
directions he appealed to me, and I tried to find something for him to
do. It is pretty hard, however, to help a young man who has started
wrong. Once he gets the idea that—because he has crammed his head full
with mere book knowledge—the world owes him a living, it is hard for him
to change. The last I heard of the young man in question, he was trying
to eke out a miserable existence as a book agent while he was looking
about for a position somewhere with the Government as a janitor or for
some other equally humble occupation.
When I meet cases, as I frequently do, of such unfortunate and misguided
young men as I have described, I cannot but feel the most profound
sympathy for them, because I know that they are not wholly to blame for
their condition. I know that, in nine cases out of ten, they have gained
the idea at some point in their career that, because they are Negroes,
they are entitled to the special sympathy of the world, and they have
thus got into the habit of relying on this sympathy rather than on their
own efforts to make their way.
In college they gave little thought or attention to preparing for any
definite task in the world, but started out with the idea of preparing
themselves to solve the race problem. They learned in college a great
deal about the history of New England freedom; their minds were filled
with the traditions of the anti-slavery struggle; and they came out of
college with the idea that the only thing necessary to solve at once
every problem in the South was to apply the principles of the
Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. They had learned in
their studies little of the actual present-day conditions in the South
and had not considered the profound difference between the political
problem and the educational problem, between the work of destruction and
of construction, as it applies to the task of race building.
Among the most trying class of people with whom I come in contact are
the persons who have been educated in books to the extent that they are
able, upon every occasion, to quote a phrase of a sentiment from
Shakespeare, Milton, Cicero, or some other great writer. Every time any
problem arises they are on the spot with a phrase or a quotation. No
problem is so difficult that they are not able, with a definition or
abstraction of some kind, to solve it. I like phrases, and I frequently
find them useful and convenient in conversation, but I have not found in
them a solution for many of the actual problems of life.
In college they studied problems and solved them on paper. But these
problems had already been solved by some one else, and all that they had
to do was to learn the answers. They had never faced any unsolved
problems in college, and all that they had learned had not taught them
the patience and persistence which alone solve real problems.
I remember hearing this fact illustrated in a very apt way by a coloured
minister some years ago. After great sacrifice and effort he had
constructed in the South a building to be used for the purpose of
sheltering orphans and aged coloured women. After this minister had
succeeded in getting his building constructed and paid for, a young
coloured man came to inspect it and at once began pointing out the
defects in the building. The minister listened patiently for some time
and then, turning to the young man, he said: “My friend, you have an
advantage over me.” Then he paused and looked at the young man, and the
young man looked inquiringly at the minister, who continued: “I am not
able to find fault with any building which you have constructed.”
Perhaps I ought to add, in order that my statements may not be
misleading, that I do not mean to say that the type of college man that
I have described is confined to the members of my own race. Every kind
of life produces its own peculiar kind of failures, and they are not
confined to one race. It would be quite as wrong for me to give the
impression that the description which I have given applies to all
coloured graduates of New England or other colleges and to none others.
As a matter of fact, almost from the beginning we have had men from
these colleges at Tuskegee; I have come into contact with others at work
in various institutions of the South; and I have found that some of the
sanest and most useful workers were those who had graduated at Harvard
and other New England colleges. Those to whom I have referred are the
exception rather than the rule.
There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping
the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the
public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their
troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their
wrongs—partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays.
Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances,
because they do not want to lose their jobs.
A story told me by a coloured man in South Carolina will illustrate how
people sometimes get into situations where they do not like to part with
their grievances. In a certain community there was a coloured doctor of
the old school, who knew little about modern ideas of medicine, but who
in some way had gained the confidence of the people and had made
considerable money by his own peculiar methods of treatment. In this
community there was an old lady who happened to be pretty well provided
with this world’s goods and who thought that she had a cancer. For
twenty years she had enjoyed the luxury of having this old doctor treat
her for that cancer. As the old doctor became—thanks to the cancer and
to other practice—pretty well-to-do, he decided to send one of his boys
to a medical college. After graduating from the medical school, the
young man returned home, and his father took a vacation. During this
time the old lady who was afflicted with the “cancer” called in the
young man, who treated her; within a few weeks the cancer (or what was
supposed to be the cancer) disappeared, and the old lady declared
herself well.
When the father of the boy returned and found the patient on her feet
and perfectly well, he was outraged. He called the young man before him
and said: “My son, I find that you have cured that cancer case of mine.
Now, son, let me tell you something. I educated you on that cancer. I
put you through high school, through college, and finally through the
medical school on that cancer. And now you, with your new ideas of
practising medicine, have come here and cured that cancer. Let me tell
you, son, you have started all wrong. How do you expect to make a living
practising medicine in that way?”
I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who
don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds
out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an
easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the
public.
My experience is that people who call themselves “The Intellectuals”
understand theories, but they do not understand things. I have long been
convinced that, if these men could have gone into the South and taken up
and become interested in some practical work which would have brought
them in touch with people and things, the whole world would have looked
very different to them. Bad as conditions might have seemed at first,
when they saw that actual progress was being made, they would have taken
a more hopeful view of the situation.
But the environment in which they were raised had cast them in another
world. For them there was nothing to do but insist on the application of
the abstract principles of protest. Indignation meetings in Faneuil
Hall, Boston, became at one time so frequent as to be a nuisance. It
would not have been so bad if the meetings had been confined to the
subjects for which they were proposed; but when “The Intellectuals”
found that the Southern people rarely, if ever, heard of their protests
and, if they did hear of them, paid no attention to them, they began to
attack the persons nearer home. They began to attack the people of
Boston because they said that the people of Boston had lost interest in
the cause of the Negro. After attacking the friends of the Negro
elsewhere, particularly all those who happened to disagree with them as
to the exact method of aiding the Negro, they made me a frequent and
favourite object of attack—not merely for the reasons which I have
already stated, but because they felt that if they attacked me in some
particularly violent way it would surprise people and attract attention.
There is no satisfaction in holding meetings and formulating protests
unless you can get them into the newspapers. I do not really believe
that these people think as badly of the person whom they have attacked
at different times as their words would indicate. They are merely using
them as a sort of sounding-board or megaphone to make their own voices
carry farther. The persistence and success with which these men sought
this kind of advertising has led the general public to believe the
number of my opponents among the Negro masses to be much larger than it
actually is.
A few years ago when I was in Boston and the subject of those who were
opposing me was under discussion, a coloured friend of mine, who did not
belong to the so-called “Talented Tenth,” used an illustration which has
stuck in my mind. He was originally from the South, although he had
lived in Boston for a number of years. He said that he had once lived in
Virginia, near a fashionable hotel. One day a bright idea struck him and
he went to the proprietor of the hotel and made a bargain to furnish him
regularly with a large number of frogs, which were in great demand as a
table delicacy. The proprietor asked him how many he could furnish. My
friend replied that he felt quite sure that he could furnish him with a
cart-load, if necessary, once a week. The bargain was concluded. The man
was to deliver at the hotel the following day as large a number of frogs
as possible.
When he appeared, my friend had just six frogs. The proprietor looked at
the frogs, and then at my friend.
“Where are the others?” he said.
“Well, it is this way,” my friend replied; “for months I had heard those
bull-frogs in a pond near my house, and they made so much noise that I
supposed there were at least a million of them there. When I came to
investigate, however, I found that there were only six.”
Inspired by their ambition to “make themselves heard,” and, as they
said, compel the public to pay attention to their grievances, this
little group kept up their agitation in various forms and at different
places, until their plans culminated one night in Boston in 1903. To
convince the public how deep and sincere they were in their peculiar
views, and how profoundly opposed they were to every one who had a
different opinion, they determined to do something desperate. The
coloured citizens of Boston had asked me to deliver an address before
them in one of their largest churches. The meeting was widely
advertised, and there was a large audience present. Unknown to any of my
coloured friends in Boston, this group, who, as I have stated, were
mostly graduates of New England colleges, organized a mob to disturb the
meeting and to break it up if possible. The presiding officer at the
meeting was the Hon. William H. Lewis, a graduate of Amherst College and
of the Harvard Law School. Various members of the group were scattered
in different parts of the church. In addition to themselves there were
present in the audience—and this, better than anything else, shows how
far they had been carried in their fanaticism—some of the lowest men and
women from vile dens in Boston, whom they had in some way or other
induced to come in and help them disturb the meeting.
As soon as I began speaking, the leaders, stationed in various parts of
the house, began asking questions. In this and in a number of other ways
they tried to make it impossible for me to speak. Naturally the rest of
the audience resented this, and eventually it was necessary to call in
the police and arrest the disturbers.
Of course, as soon as the disturbance was over, most of those who had
participated in it were ashamed of what they had done. Many of those who
had classed themselves with “The Intellectuals” before, hastened to
disavow any sympathy with the methods of the men who had organized the
disturbance. Many who had before been lukewarm in their friendship
became my closest friends. Of course the two leaders, who were afterward
convicted and compelled to serve a sentence in the Charles Street Jail,
remained unrepentant. They tried to convince themselves that they had
been made martyrs in a great cause, but they did not get much
encouragement in this notion from other coloured people, because it was
not possible for them to make clear just what the cause was for which
they had suffered.
The masses of coloured people in Boston and in the United States
endorsed me by resolution and condemned the disturbers of the meeting.
The Negro newspapers as a whole were scathing in their criticism of
them. For weeks afterward my mail was filled with letters from coloured
people, asking me to visit various sections and speak to the people.
[Illustration:
A type of unpretentious cabin which an Alabama Negro formerly occupied
and the modern house in which he now lives
]
I was intensely interested in observing the results of this disturbance.
For one thing I wanted to find out whether a principle in human nature
that I had frequently observed elsewhere would prove true in this case.
I have found in my dealings with the Negro race—and I believe that the
same is true of all races—that the only way to hold people together is
by means of a constructive, progressive programme. It is not argument,
nor criticism, nor hatred, but work in constructive effort, that gets
hold of men and binds them together in a way to make them rally to the
support of a common cause.
Before many weeks had passed, these leaders began to disagree among
themselves. Then they began to quarrel, and one by one they began to
drop away. The result is that, at the present time, the group has been
almost completely dispersed and scattered. Many of “The Intellectuals”
to-day do not speak to one another.
The most surprising thing about this disturbance, I confess, is the fact
that it was organized by the very people who have been loudest in
condemning the Southern white people because they had suppressed the
expression of opinion on public questions and denied the Negro the right
of free speech.
As a matter of fact, I have talked to audiences in every part of this
country; I have talked to coloured audiences in the North and to white
audiences in the South; I have talked to audiences of both races in all
parts of the South; everywhere I have spoken frankly and, I believe,
sincerely on everything that I had in my mind and heart to say. When I
had something to say about the white people I said it to the white
people; when I had something to say about coloured people I said it to
coloured people. In all these years—that is the curious thing about
it—no effort has been made, so far as I can remember, to interrupt or to
break up a meeting at which I was present until it was attempted by “The
Intellectuals” of my own race in Boston.
I have gone to some length to describe this incident because it seems to
me to show clearly the defects of that type of mind which the so-called
“Intellectuals” of the race represent.
I do not wish to give the impression by what I have said that, behind
all the intemperance and extravagance of these men, there is not a vein
of genuine feeling and even at times of something like real heroism. The
trouble is that all this fervour and intensity is wasted on side issues
and trivial matters. It does not connect itself with anything that is
helpful and constructive. These crusaders, as nearly as I can see, are
fighting windmills.
The truth is, I suspect, as I have already suggested, that “The
Intellectuals” live too much in the past. They know books but they do
not know men. They know a great deal about the slavery controversy, for
example, but they know almost nothing about the Negro. Especially are
they ignorant in regard to the actual needs of the masses of the
coloured people in the South to-day.
There are some things that one individual can do for another, and there
are some things that one race can do for another. But, on the whole,
every individual and every race must work out its own salvation. Let me
add that if one thing more than another has taught me to have confidence
in the masses of my own people it has been their willingness (and even
eagerness) to learn and their disposition to help themselves and depend
upon themselves as soon as they have learned how to do so.